The Most Famous Mouse in the World Plans a Comeback

The Mouse is ‘tooning back in.

Mickey Mouse--along with Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Pluto and Daisy--will make a comeback for the first time in more than 40 years in a new TV series to be produced by the Walt Disney Co., studio executives announced Tuesday.

“MouseWorks,” a weekly half-hour series scheduled to premiere in January 1999, will be produced by an animation team exclusively assigned to create new adventures for Disney’s best-known character.

The series will mark the first time that new Mickey Mouse footage has been produced on a regular basis for TV since the original run of “The Mickey Mouse Club” from 1955 to 1959.

Each episode will feature a mixture of short “gag” cartoons and longer “story” cartoons from six to 12 minutes in length. The cartoons will all be original, although some themes and situations from older cartoons may appear, and will feature voices that match the original characters.

Roy E. Disney, vice chairman of the board for the Walt Disney Co., made the announcement in honor of Mickey Mouse’s 69th birthday celebration.

In recent years, Mickey has turned up mostly in movie theaters--in 1995’s short “Runaway Brain” and in 1983’s “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.”

Barry Blumberg, senior vice president of Disney Television Animation, said the company for decades had wanted to return Mickey Mouse to television.

“We’ve always wanted to do a show, but we’ve never had an idea that would make everybody happy and comfortable,” Blumberg said.

Producers Roberts Gannaway and Tony Craig came up with the concept of “MouseWorks,” Blumberg said, and Roy E. Disney was pleased with the idea, as was Disney Chairman Michael Eisner. Gannaway and Craig previously produced TV’s “The Lion King’s Timon & Pumbaa” and “101 Dalmatians: The Series.”

“It’s a natural evolution that has made this come around now,” said Blumberg. Gannaway and Craig will head up the new series and the Mickey Mouse team.

No decision has been made yet on whether “MouseWorks” will air on the Disney-owned ABC network, in syndication or on the Disney Channel for cable.

Blumberg said that even with the high cost of producing a quality animation series, Disney is dedicated to making the new cartoons comparable to the originals.

“We’re going to do whatever it takes to make this as good as it can possibly be,” he said. “We will put in more time and more resources into making this work than we would toward a typical episode.”

Music also will play a key role in the new cartoons, just as in the studio’s original “Silly Symphony” cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s. A musical score will be composed before each cartoon is produced to provide a rhythm for the character and the action. “Each cartoon will have a unique feel to it,” Blumberg said.